Updated on September 23, 2024.
You may have heard the saying “laughter is powerful medicine.” Research over the years has suggested that this saying may have some truth to it. Laughter may benefit your health in a number of ways, from raising pain tolerance to helping the immune system to reducing stress and anxiety.
Laughter may also be beneficial for your heart and blood vessels, also known as your cardiovascular system.
Laugher and heart health
Blood vessels are lined with a layer of cells called endothelium; this helps to regulate blood flow by helping blood vessels expand and contract. Laughter relaxes blood vessels and increases blood flow—the exact opposite of what your blood vessels do when you’re stressed.
In one small older study, healthy adults watched either a funny movie or an intense, violent one while researchers measured blood flow through a blood vessel in their upper arm. Watching the funny movie caused blood vessels to dilate, increasing blood flow by about 22 percent. The action movie caused mental stress and blood vessel constriction, decreasing blood flow by about 35 percent.
Having relaxed blood vessels decreases strain on the heart. Researchers aren't exactly sure how emotions affect blood vessels. Different emotions may alter levels of stress hormones like cortisol that affect blood vessel or nitric oxide function. Nitric oxide is a chemical in the blood that helps blood vessels to relax.
Quantity vs. quality
A study published in 2020 in the Journal of Epidemiology followed several hundred people over five years. Researchers found that how often a person laughs may be linked to their risk of dying from any cause and to their risk of having a cardiovascular disease or event, such as a heart attack.
How much is enough? People who reported laughing on average more than once a week were at significantly less risk than those who reported laughing less than once a month. Another study published in 2021 in the same journal noted that middle-aged men in particular who reported laughing infrequently (almost never, or 1-3 times a month) experienced higher blood pressure overall.
Other studies have shown that daily laughter can have an overall protective benefit against so-called “lifestyle diseases,” or those caused by smoking, diet, or lack of exercise—including cardiovascular disease.
To get heart health benefits, your laughter may not even need to always be genuine. In one 2018 study published in the journal Complementary Therapies in Medicine, researchers looked at the effects on the heart during real, spontaneous laughter, and during simulated or fake laughter. Both types of laughter raised the heart rate, similar to exercise, and in fact the fake laughter had stronger effects than the real laughter.
Laughter therapy
According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), laughter can be a viable and helpful tool for heart health and heart function. Laughing more on a regular basis can be linked to not just less risk of heart disease, but fewer problems during cardiac rehabilitation, which is a therapy for people with heart problems and those who are recovering from a heart attack.
The VA also advises a practice called “laughter yoga.” Research into this practice is still new, but studies so far show it may be helpful. The goal is to laugh whether you feel an urge to laugh or not, with the idea that usually you’ll start to laugh for real during the process.
One exercise the VA recommends is saying “Mississippi Tennessee” but replacing the words with the syllables “Ha ha ho ho hee hee hee” said in the same cadence. Do it 10 times, and it might actually induce real laughter. You can learn more laughter yoga exercises from Laughter Yoga International.
A healthy diet and regular exercise are the mainstays of improving heart health, but laughter therapy could be a great addition. Take the first steps to growing younger and healthier with the RealAge Test.
